Oct. 15 was the 20th anniversary of China’s first manned spaceflight, with its Russian Soyuz-derived Shenzhou-5 space capsule having orbited the Earth 14 times in 21 hours before landing, with Yang Liwei, a former People’s Liberation Army Air Force Shenyang J-6 fighter pilot, aboard.
Given the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) propensity to constantly remind the Chinese and the world of their glorious achievements, the anniversary of China’s and Mr. Yang’s first space flight was a modest event in state media, featuring a CCTV interview with Mr. Yang and articles in China Daily and the People’s Liberation Army Daily.
Commenting on China’s Tiangong space station, China Daily paraphrased Mr. Yang, saying, “Tiangong serves as a national space experiment platform and brings benefits to humanity as a whole.”
Mr. Yang came closer to the truth in his CCTV interview, saying, “As the General Secretary [of the CCP, Xi Jinping,] said, we must build a space power.”
However, the CCP’s propaganda machine will never acknowledge that the Shenzhou-5 flight was the beginning of the PLA-controlled Chinese manned space program.
From its beginning, China’s manned space program has also served to advance China’s military capabilities in space.
This reflects the CCP’s fundamental rejection of the longstanding American and Western effort to establish “norms” of peaceful behavior in space, such as was expressed in the 1967 United Nations Outer Space Treaty and the U.S. 1920 Artemis Accords, now joined by 31 nations.
On Oct. 15, Shenzhou-5 astronaut Mr. Yang was actually the secondary payload; the primary payload for that first manned space flight was two large optical cameras in the spacecraft’s orbital module that conducted low Earth orbit optical surveillance of targets on Earth for the PLA.
Based on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft’s three-section design—propulsion module, manned module, and orbital equipment module—the orbital module of Shenzhou-5 continued to conduct Earth surveillance for five more months until March 16, 2004.
Four previous unmanned Shenzhou missions also carried military payloads: Shenzhou-1 (Nov. 19, 1999) had an electronic intelligence system; Shenzhou-2 (Jan. 9, 2001) also carried an electronic intelligence system; Shenzhou-3 (March 25, 2002) carried an optical camera; and Shenzhou-4 (Dec. 29, 2002) carried an optical camera and a radar surveillance system.
But China’s most provocative dual-use mission of the early Shenzhou series was the Sept. 25, 2008, Shenzhou-7 mission, famous in Chinese propaganda for conducting China’s first manned spacewalk.
Not mentioned in Chinese propaganda or most Western commentary is that Shenzhou-7 “fired” the 88-pound BanXing-1 microsatellite as the Shenzhou-7 passed within 28 miles of the International Space Station (ISS).
This action was first reported on a Russian space-fan website but then later confirmed to this analyst by the public affairs office of NASA.
At orbital speeds of 17,000 miles per hour, launching a microsatellite so close to the ISS was reckless—potentially endangering the lives of the two Russians and one American aboard at that time. But neither government issued any protest over the Chinese regime’s threatening and dangerous maneuver in space.
The Shenzhou-7 mission also revealed something of the character of the PLA-controlled Chinese space program: The assumption by the CCP that the ISS was an armed military asset warranting attack indicates that China has no hesitation to arm its space stations and other large manned space platforms, including its bases on the moon and beyond.
There’s a possibility that the PLA possesses an undisclosed fully armed version of the Shenzhou spacecraft, with an orbital module armed with space-targeting and missile interception systems.
The Tiangong space station, meanwhile, is copied from the Russian MIR space station based on multiple replaceable large modules, meaning any module could be replaced with one filled with Earth surveillance system or weapons, such as nuclear hypersonic glide vehicles (HGV) for striking targets on Earth.
In 2024, China will launch the 15-ton Xuntian space telescope, which will follow but also be able to dock with the Tiangong space station.
Under the pretext of replacing a damaged Xuntian, the PLA could launch an independent combat satellite based on the 14-ton Tianzhou cargo transport that serves the Tiangong but is armed with missile or laser weapons.
When the PLA goes to the moon, it will also seek to secure dual-use military benefits for the CCP.
Chinese space journal articles indicate that the PLA may already have plans to place large radar stations on the moon to watch targets on Earth, but more importantly, to monitor the U.S. and other space objects in cis-lunar space—the area between the Earth and the moon, and the Lagrangian points—all to better secure control over the Earth–moon system.
So the main lesson of 20 years of China’s military-manned space program is that political-diplomatic measures to prevent military conflict in space or on the moon, such as the U.S.-led Artemis Accords, are insufficient to stop the CCP from pursuing military advantage and control in space.
Until the CCP expires or abandons its ambitions for hegemony on Earth, the United States and its partners in space will need to achieve security, meaning they will require military capabilities in space to use against Beijing’s manned and unmanned space systems intended to attack the democracies.
